Love is sex, religion and color blind

No matter how much you love the gay couples on Modern Family, Brothers & Sisters or The Kids Are All Right, and no matter how progressive you believe you are, how would you really feel if your son or daughter announced he/she was marrying a person of the same sex?

I’d be just fine, as long as my child’s partner was a wonderful person.  I’d rather my daughter be with someone else’s wonderful daughter than with someone else’s lousy son.

As I watched FOFs Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play a long-married, gay couple in The Kids Are All Right, I thought how natural it felt to me when they were lying in bed together, sitting with their kids at the dinner table or cuddling up on the sofa to watch a movie.

When I woke my mother to tell her about my first date with my former husband, 43 years ago, she asked: “Is he Jewish?” Parents back in the day thought a marriage stood a better chance of being successful if the couple was the same religion.  If I had wanted to marry someone of a different religion, it would have displeased my folks.  Yet, a decade later, when my younger sister married an Irish Catholic boy, my mom and dad welcomed him with open arms. Her marriage succeeded. Mine didn’t, even though Douglas and I were the same religion.

My daughter’s boyfriend is black. Although my mother and father would have had joint heart attacks if I brought home a black boyfriend four decades ago, my mom liked her granddaughter’s choice.  When I look at Noel, I don’t see a color. I see the man Simone loves.

As far as I’m concerned, all that matters in a successful relationship is mutual respect, love and commitment.  If the person in the world who brings you the most joy has the same anatomy or a different color skin, go for it. Besides, it’s no one else’s business but yours.